


Be My Valentine?

by im2old4thisotp



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Kid!Stiles, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, kid!Lydia, married stydia, valentines day fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 07:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13677261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/im2old4thisotp/pseuds/im2old4thisotp
Summary: “Stiles. You’re still working on those things?” John’s sleep-filled voice croaked out, and a heavy hand laid onto the boy’s head, rubbing his flat hair affectionately.“I’m almost done. Working on the last one right now.” Stiles scanned the messy pile of cards in front of him, the names readable in the dim light of the room: Scott, Danny, Erica, Heather, Jackson...all his classmates were there.All but one.





	Be My Valentine?

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, all you crazy kids.
> 
> I cranked this out in about 5 hours. I'd love all the comments and kudos you're willing to give me. It'll make my lack of sleep worth it. I hope.
> 
> (un-beta'd, so please forgive any mistakes)

_The sound of the pencil on the paper and the ticking of the clock in the hall were the only sounds in the kitchen. It was late, but the boy at the table would not be deterred. Heavy footfalls descended the stairs and stopped when they entered the room. Stiles’ head lifted when he saw his Dad round the corner, and he quickly slid the paper he had been writing on under the pile of cards in front of him._

_“Stiles. You’re still working on those things?” John’s sleep-filled voice croaked out, and a heavy hand laid onto the boy’s head, rubbing his flat hair affectionately._

_“I’m almost done. Working on the last one right now.” Stiles scanned the messy pile of cards in front of him, the names readable in the dim light of the room: Scott, Danny, Erica, Heather, Jackson...all his classmates were there._

_All but one._

_“I didn’t think this would take you all night, son. It’s late. Why don’t you just put the names on them tomorrow at school?”_

_Stiles rolled his eyes. “Dad. Picking the right Valentine for the right person is important. You don’t want to send the wrong message. This is something that will stick around with them for the whole_ year _. You can’t just leave that up to chance!” Stiles shuffled around in the pile directly to his right, pulling out a particular card and handing it to his dad. “This one, for example. What if that card ended up in Jackson’s hands, huh?”_

_John squinted at the card in front of him, holding it an arm’s length away. He read aloud, “I’ll be your...scruffy nerf-herder?” He raised an eyebrow and looked back at his son._

_Stiles flailed his arms out wide. “See?_ That’s _why it’s taking me a long time. This is a_ science _, Dad. I can’t tell Jackson Whittemore that I want to be his scruffy nerf-herder!”_

_His dad rubbed his hands over his forehead and shook his head at his hyperactive son. “I don’t think it matters that much.”_

_Stiles scoffed. “Everything matters, Dad. This is_ fourth grade _we’re talking about, not preschool.”_

_John shrugged his shoulders. “If you say so. You found the right one for each person in the class?”_

_Stiles nodded. “Yup. Jackson doesn’t get Han.” He pulled the card from his Dad’s hands, mock-shuddering as he did so. “That would be a complete waste. Jackson gets Jabba, of course. Scott got Luke. Mrs. Greene got Yoda. Greenberg got a Tie Fighter one.” He leaned over to his Dad and whispered, “No one wants the Tie Fighter ones.”_

_John couldn’t help the snort that escaped his lips. Stiles sat back up straight, smiling to himself._

_“Well, don’t stay up too much later, okay?”_

_“Okay.”_

_John managed one more head rub before heading back up the steps. When he was safely at the top of the steps, Stiles slowly pulled the piece of notebook paper out from underneath the pile of completed Valentines._

_There was only one person left._

_The only person that mattered on Valentine’s Day._

_Lydia Martin._

_After much internal debate, he had finally decided on the Leia valentine. It made the most sense-—she wore her hair in braids sometimes, so it fit that way, plus Leia was the best girl and Lydia was definitely the best. But he hated the wording on the valentine itself-—”You’re my only hope”-—and he also felt like pigeon-holing Lydia as merely a princess was seriously limiting who she was as a person. When he thought about giving it to Lydia, the wording sounded so cheesy. It just...wasn’t right. So he had scratched it out with black marker so it wouldn’t show up. It needed to say more. So he was going out on a limb, and doing a handwritten note. He’d stick it carefully inside the folded card._

_His letter could say everything that he wanted to say, but couldn’t actually say out loud._

_He looked at the piece of notebook paper-—one that he found that didn’t have his sticky fingerprints on it. He read over his words again, checking for misspellings-—Lydia would definitely continue to ignore him if he did something as stupid as spelling the word “imagine” incorrectly. He had taken his time with it, using his best handwriting. He wouldn’t want the message to be lost because she couldn’t read his chicken scratch (something Mrs. Greene frequently mentioned to him)._

_Satisfied with the words, he took a deep breath, wrote the last sentence, and signed his name._

Love, Stiles.

_He cut the paper down in size and then folded it into one of those cool configurations like the girls liked to make, taping it inside the fold. It just barely fit, but when he used the small heart sticker to wrap around the edge of the card, it wasn’t too obvious that there was something stuck inside it. When she opened the card, though, she’d definitely find it._

_And then maybe she’d see._

_Right now, she doesn’t notice him. The only time he ever felt her return his gaze was when he leaned back too far in his seat and fell-—loudly. Even then it wasn’t like she was the only one looking at him._ Everyone _looked at him then, and they usually laughed. Except Scott, of course. Blood brothers didn’t laugh at each other that way._

_But after this? It would be different._

_He stuffed all the valentines into his hastily-decorated box, the one he had nearly sliced his finger off while cutting out the hole on the top (he didn’t tell his dad about that one), and carefully laid Lydia’s valentine on top. It had to be kept safe until delivery in class tomorrow._

_After all, this was going to change everything._

_Tomorrow, Lydia Martin would finally see Stiles Stilinski._  
  


***************  


“ _Damnit!_ ”

Stiles slammed the card shut and shoved it back into the rack. A gasp erupted from the space next to him. He turned to see a very wide-eyed little girl and an astounded-looking mom staring at him, mouths gaping. He flushed with embarrassment. “Oh, I’m so sorry for my language. I’m trying to find the perfect card to tell my wife I love her, you see, and the card-makers at Hallmark seem to have forgotten how to craft acceptable romantic balladry in this year’s selection, so…”

The mother hurriedly ushered her daughter away with an angry look, whispering harshly to the child as they left.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles muttered after them, turning his attention back to the vibrant, nearly-empty display of red and pink and white staring back at him. “ _You_ probably have some run-of-the-mill dad-type that you’re buying a card for. Some guy who will be tickled with the idiotic stylings of-—” he grabbed a red card in front of him with a hand-drawn mushroom on it “-— _Dad, you’re my favorite fungi_ .” He couldn’t help it; he chuckled. Then he let out a frustrated noise and shoved the card back into its place. “While I’m stuck with the incompetent selections of the Hallmark display, trying to find the perfect words to convey the depth of my love for one Lydia Martin-Stilinski. _You have_ no _idea how good you have it._ ”

He scanned his eyes over the display, frustration and panic rising as he realized, _this is just...not going to happen today_.

He looked around the aisle, the picked-over spaces and cards mismatched with envelopes. There were other men, wandering through the aisle bewilderedly, trying to find the perfect something for their wife or their girlfriend or their girl-on-the-side at the last-minute. If they were to look at Stiles, they would assume that he was in the same predicament as they were: leaving the requisite card-buying until the very last possible moment (or perhaps they even forgot about the holiday altogether and are scrambling to find something-—anything at all-—to make it seem like they have their significant other’s emotional needs in the front of their minds at all times).

The problem was that Stiles _wasn’t_ like any of these other guys. He knew that for a _fact_ , because he hadn’t seen any of them any other day this week. Or last week.

Because he _had_ been here. Searching through the cards, trying to find something _perfect_ . All he found were things that were too maudlin, or too trite, or too ugly, or too ridiculous. He’d even started looking through the cards for other titles-—aunt, cousin, son, grandpa-—in the off-chance that he would find something that would work by simply scratching out the title and inserting _wife_ or _Lydia_ in its place.

The fungi card? That was the last one. And, like all the others he had seen, it had failed to meet the impossibly high standard he had set for appropriate carding. He hadn’t thought they were impossibly high, but apparently, they were.

It was February 13th, and he was literally out of time and out of options.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. Instead, he sighed deeply and left the store, crossing the parking lot to the Jeep and letting himself inside.

He longed for the simplicity of his youth. Find a box of cards that you like. Slap your name on them, pair them with the name of a classmate, stick them in a box.

Now, it felt so much more complicated.

He had the perfect gift already. A first edition copy of _Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone_ that Isaac (of all people) had mailed to him from London.

But the card that accompanied it had to be special. It had to say something. It had to say _everything_.

And he was coming home empty-handed.

He pulled up to the house and grabbed his messenger bag. He tried to throw on a happy face, but he knew it wouldn’t work-—Lydia could sniff out a bad mood on him the same way she could tell the difference between an authentically vintage handbag and a crafty fake.

His point was made when he was changing clothes, and Lydia met him in their room, her petite frame peering around into their walk-in closet.

“What’s wrong?”

Stiles sighed. He was hoping to at least make it to dinner before confessing his failure. “Nothing.” He took in the sight of her tiny body in his Beacon Hills Lacrosse sweatshirt and leggings, her bare feet padding across the carpet towards him. He decided distraction might be in order. He waggled his eyebrows at her. “You’re looking good, Mrs. Stilinski.”

Lydia leveled him with a withering look. “Stiles. I can feel your anxiety through the walls.” She stepped into the closet, dodging the pile of his shoes and socks, and wrapping her arms around his waist briefly. “Come on. What’s wrong? Did you have a bad day at the office?”

He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and rested his chin there for a moment, taking a deep breath and holding her close. “No, nothing like that. It’s just…”

He pulled back and looked down at her. Her head was thrown back to catch his gaze, and it broke his heart a bit to think about disappointing her for their first Valentine’s Day as a married couple. He took another deep breath, and decided to break it to her early so that she wouldn’t be even more disappointed tomorrow when she realized he didn’t have a card for her.

Stiles led her to sit with him on their bed. The concern in her eyes was almost too much for him. He hated disappointing her. Hated it. She held his hand in both of hers, her thumbs tracing patterns along the veins.

“It’s so stupid, really. I...I have been looking for days for the perfect card for you. No, not days. _Weeks_.” Lydia’s eyes blinked in surprise. “Literal weeks, Lydia. I went to the store every day. Sometimes more than one store. And I wasn’t able to find anything. Do you realize how incredibly amateurish the card industry has become? They can’t even conjure up even the most basic versions of affection required. We follow a time of great poets and orators, writers of sonnets and soliloquies that have been carved into ancient buildings and copied into numerous texts, and the best we can muster are pitiful memes shared by morons on social media, and cards pronouncing ‘I love you a latte’ over a hand-drawn cup of coffee? I genuinely think that the intelligence of the human race is somehow devolving so that we are just in this endless cycle to determine who can be the more stupid of the species until we eventually just throw colored rocks at each other with grunts and whistles and call it a day. I mean, this entire holiday just barely reaches the requirements of acceptability for what constitutes a holiday anyway, with not even a day off of work or anything, but to then slap some mediocre platitudes onto the symbols of our devotion is just...well, it’s just despicable, in my opinion.”

“ _Stiles_!”

Lydia’s insistent tone broke him from his rant, and he realized, somewhat surprisingly, that he was no longer sitting next to her on the bed, but had apparently been pacing back and forth around their room. It had also been happening long enough for Lydia to get that faux-exasperated look that she got on her face when he started to rant about something-or-other and she pretended to be annoyed (but secretly loved seeing how his mind worked, though she’d never admit it aloud).

“Huh?”

“So you’re saying you didn’t get me a card.”

Stiles’ shoulders slumped. “No.”

“And you’re upset because you wanted the card to tell me how you feel.”

Stiles dropped his chin to his chest in defeat. “Yeah.”

Lydia stood up and crossed to where Stiles stood, embarrassed. He didn’t see her until she was ducking under his bent head and looking up at him in amusement.

“Oh my god.”

She placed a chaste kiss onto his lips, and walked out of the room.

Stiles blinked in confusion and called after her, “Uh, babe? Please come back. I’m sorry! I’ll start shopping for a good one at Christmas next year! God knows they put the cards out earlier and earlier.”

Her voice called back to him distantly, like she was across the house. “Stop freaking out and just sit down before you give yourself an aneurysm or something!”

Stiles knew better than to argue. He just sat and waited. Maybe next year he could try the town over from this one? They may have a better selection elsewhere. He only tried three different stores this time-—next year he’d do better.

“I said to stop freaking out,” Lydia said from the doorway. Her soft tone matched the affectionate look in her eyes. Stiles noticed she had returned with a small, pink box. She sat down on the bed and put the box behind her, just out of his sight. His curiosity was piqued.

“Stiles, what do you hand me before I leave every day?”

He smiled at the thought. “A chai latte.”

“And what do you serve the chai latte in?”

He wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but he shrugged and figured he’d play along. These were easy questions, after all. “In your periodic table travel mug.”

Lydia smirked. “Why don’t you give me a different mug?”

“Because that one is your favorite. It fits in your cup holder in the car, and it has a no-spill lid.”

“Yes, and it reminds me of being in Paris with you.”

“That was a good trip.” Stiles remembered the look on her face when he had given her the tickets for a Christmas gift that year. He had scrimped and saved as much as he could from his meager paycheck for almost a full year, but all the ramen was completely worth it for that look on her face.

Lydia’s hand lifted to Stiles’ face, cupping his jaw affectionately. “It was an incredible trip. You asked me to marry you.”

He smiled. “Best decision ever.”

“Stiles, I take my perfect chai latte to work in the car you did meticulous research about before haggling and getting a ridiculously low price on. I find hearts written on my rear-view mirror in dry-erase marker. I get texts from you in the middle of the day, telling me about how you discovered The Brazil Nut Effect, or the latest article on prehistoric wine and wondering what a drunk T-Rex would look like.”

Stiles chuckled once again at the imagery that the memory conjured up.

Lydia continued. “You make all of my favorite foods to perfection and refuse to let me do the dishes. You massage my feet while we watch TV and you let me control the remote-—”

“-—Except when the Mets are on!” Stiles interrupted.

“You let me put my cold feet on you in bed and...you _always_ make me come before you do.”

“Sometimes twice,” he teased.

Lydia returned his teasing with a serious look. “Exactly. _Most of the time_. Do you know how many women complain about their husbands’ lack of attention?”

Stiles shrugged. “I mean, I’ve been dreaming about eating you out my entire life, I’m not going to waste the opportunity, y’know?”

Lydia’s half-smile made her dimple pop, and Stiles’ heart swelled at the sight of it. He leaned forward to place a kiss there.

Lydia leaned into his chest. “Stiles. You don’t need a perfect card to tell me that you love me.”

“But...it’s Valentin-—”

Lydia pressed her fingers to his lips. “It’s a stupid holiday with its foundations in martyrdom. I don't care about the holiday. I care about the every day. And no one does a better job saying ‘I love you’ every day than you do, Stiles. It’s everything. The latte, the remote, the hundred ways I didn’t talk about. All of it.”

Lydia sat upright and pulled the box onto her lap. “My mom was cleaning out the lake house attic and she brought me a big box. I only just opened it to see what was inside, and I found this.”

The pink paper was faded, remnants of stickers on the outside. Lydia’s name was printed in fancy lettering, red curlicues surrounding her name. “I used the same box every year throughout elementary school-—it was the one project my dad actually helped me with before he traded us in for a newer model. Not sure if I thought something like this would keep him around, or what...”

Stiles kissed the back of her neck and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.

“Babe…”

Lydia shook her head. “No, that’s not what this is about. Look!”

She lifted the lid of the box, and the inside was stuffed full of valentines.

“Oh. My. God!” Stiles’ eyes went wide as he took in the mounds of brightly-colored folded cards. Lydia’s hands carefully pawed through the box, some of the cards spilling onto the floor, but she seemed unconcerned.

“I kept them all. I guess I thought they would help solidify my popularity or something, if everyone saw this huge pile come tumbling out of the box? I don’t know. It’s stupid. I never even read most of them. I just liked to see the pile get bigger every year.”

She shifted until there was space between them, and flipped the box upside down, creating a pile of cards that spilled off the edge of the bed onto the floor. As she lifted the box, a single, zippered plastic baggie sat atop the pile, one solitary valentine card inside it.

It didn’t take Stiles more than a second to realize: it was his valentine. The one he had spent so much extra time writing, the one he was convinced would change everything. His breath hitched, and his gaze flew upward to where Lydia was looking back at him, a soft look in her eyes.

“You...you kept it?”

Lydia nodded. “The year I got this card was one of the worst years of my life. Dad walked out on Christmas Eve and never really came back. Mom was a wreck. She could barely take care of herself, much less… I was so lonely.”

She picked up the baggie, gently opening it and taking out the card on the inside. She held it gently in her hands.

“This letter you wrote? It made me feel...seen. For the first time in a while. The words aren’t the most eloquent, or the most poetic. But they came when I needed them the most.”

Stiles couldn’t quite believe she kept the card. And not only kept it, but-—protected it. She was always awe-inspiring to him, but now...he got the feeling that maybe he had been that way for her a time or two, as well. He felt his heart pounding in his chest, and he knew if he didn’t get to kiss her soon, he was going to start crying. He shoved the pile of cards between them off to the side, and scooted close, their knees overlapping, his hands reaching around and spanning across her back.

She held Stiles’ card close to her chest, her other hand returning to his cheek. “I don’t need any fancy words in a card. You wrote me the perfect words a long time ago. And ever since then, you’ve seen me. And you’ve been there every single time I’ve needed you the most.”

He felt all sound leave the room as he finally pressed an urgent kiss to her lips. The only thing he heard was his heartbeat, the only thing he felt was her plush lips against his own. His hand slid up to tangle in the hair at the back of her head, and he angled his head to deepen the kiss. He felt her sigh into his mouth and his heart swelled with the feeling of _home_.

She pulled away gently, and for a moment they just breathed together.

Lydia leaned back to look into his eyes. “Thank you, Stiles. Thank you for always seeing me.”

Stiles shook his head in amazement, and smiled softly at her. “How could I not? You’re Lydia Martin.”

“Lydia Martin-Stilinski,” she corrected with a grin. She cocked her head to the side. “Will you do me a favor?”

“Absolutely.”

Lydia pressed the folded letter into Stiles’ hand. “Will you read the last line of this letter to me?”

Stiles’ brain kicked into gear. He had written this letter almost 20 years ago-—he had no memory of what it said. It had the potential to be horrendously embarrassing. But, he was willing to fly to the moon for her, and God knew he had done more embarrassing things in the past than read his ten-year-old self’s letters.

He unfolded the note, impressing himself once again with his own attention to detail with the complex fold. He found himself chuckling. Lydia smiled.

“It impressed me, too. How’d you learn to do it?”

“Erica showed me at recess one day.”

He finally opened the last of the folds and gently pressed the paper flat against his legs. He smiled fondly at the smears of the graphite on the paper, the thick lines of the pencil marks showing off his attention to his penmanship. He quickly scanned the words, his eyes finally resting on the last sentence. He broke into a full smile, huffing out a laugh. He shook his head at his own youthfulness. He looked up to see Lydia smiling at him in return. Then she nodded at the paper and cocked her eyebrow in question.

Stiles nodded. He exaggeratedly cleared his throat, holding the paper up in front of him.

“Miss Lydia Martin, will you be my valentine for all eternity?”

Lydia’s eyes shined back at him with joy and love, and Stiles’ heart skipped a beat. He wished he could journey back in time to tell the fourth grade version of himself that one day, Lydia Martin would look at him like he hung the moon. He’d give himself the biggest high five, even knowing that the younger version of himself wouldn’t believe a second of it.

Some things just need to be seen for themselves.

Lydia beamed at him. “Yes, I will, Stiles Stilinski.”

 

 


End file.
